Burning Inquiry — Yelling “YOLO” with Yidris

I’m getting old and irrelevant FAST. However, being a high school teacher does keep one fresh to the way young people talk (pause while young people everywhere groan). Furthermore it affords you the opportunity to exercise patience and eventually summon language years beyond its appropriate use. Believe that there is joy in telling a room full of teenagers, “This parabola gets turnt up at x=4.” The few that are not on their phones will hate you for it; and, for a second, you’ll remember what it’s like to be an adolescent, tangled in angst, as those different than you just don’t understand your brilliant head filled with illogical dreams. In that spirit, today we brew a deck to do big, splashy, totally unreasonable things. Today we resolve to conduct ourselves with utter irresponsibility and ignore that hard-won wisdom that our youthful desires are easily foiled. Today we get lit and yell “YOLO!” into the wind while those around us demand we turn the volume down.

As always in this series we’ll examine how inquiry plays a role in deck building. The first article considered the entire inquiry-action-reflection cycle and its application to revising a Mimeoplasm list based on experience. However, since today we are building a list from scratch, we’ll look specifically at the various inquiries that guided the construction of my presented Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder list.

Inquiry #1: Teenage Dream

When the latest Commander product came out my playgroup committed ourselves to several weeks of playing the preconstructed decks without any changes. I only played Yidris, and I grinned like a Cheshire cat the whole time. However, I also noticed a few things.

First, the deck did not support the general all that well. There are few cards in the deck that protect the general or make it easier to connect with Yidris for some chaotic cascade action. It didn’t help that another general had a stapled on Yidris kill spell — *cough* Breya. Basically, I learned to play the deck absent of Yidris. Now, as I turn my eye towards brewing my own Yidris list, my first inquiry is:

Is there a way to enable Yidris without jamming non-synergistic protection effects and combat tricks?

The irresponsible answer: I don’t force it. I’ve never been a fan of predictable cards like Lightning Greaves as protection. Also, as much as I would love trampling over the top with Might of Oaks, it only synergizes with the front half of Yidris (allowing him to deal combat damage), but not the back half (fun spells to cascade into post-combat). The already included Whispersilk Cloak is a good fit, but my is it boring. What it comes down to is that when Yidris enters the scene, he is numero uno by most threat assessments, and haters gonna hate. I decided that if I brew a list I will not fight, but embrace this challenge. My radical idea is that perhaps I can make a deck that powers out enough big, ludicrous threats to make Yidris pale in comparison.

I also noticed that the preconstructed deck’s strongest plays involved recurring spells from a graveyard stocked by wheel effects. I kept thinking to myself, “Mizzix’s Mastery would be bonkers right now.” In a chaotic deck, the graveyard was a source of certainty. Thus a driving question is:

Do I really want another graveyard deck?

Honestly, these colors are great for wheel effects and giant recursive spells. That’s probably the most powerful direction to build here. But when I read the text of the Maelstrom Wielder I couldn’t divorce myself from the fact that Cascade deals with the library, not the grave. So I will construct a deck that recycles cards by shuffling them back into my library. I want a library full of dreams, not a graveyard of uninspired ideas like my kids believe I have!

Inquiry #2: Instant Gratification

With a young mind full of ideas about how the world works, one thing I know to be true is that I don’t want to wait until my board is all grown up until I have fun. I want Cascade now! Fortunately for this there is an inquiry that most Yidris deck builders immediately consider:

Inquiry #3: Party Boy Yidris

Well, now that the burners are set to “Phenomenal Cosmic Power!” you better believe I don’t want to be condemned to the “itty bitty living space” of an exhausted hand of cards. Yidris is extra, as the kids would say, and we beg the question:

Just when you thought the party was over, someone arrives at the front door with a keg and says, “My name is Yidris and I like to party.”

Inquiry #4: The Obligatory Ritual

As you can probably tell, I’ve thrown out a lot of cards with high converted mana costs. Here’s where all the old people in my life complain about this generation always wanting handouts, and I must ask…

I look forward to the wild ride this list promises. Unfortunately, the way my bank account is set up I might have to wait awhile before I get some actual cardboard experience with the deck. However, if this unbridled exercise in youthful spirit inspired you to build something similar, please let me know how it goes.

Just remember: no one man should have all that power. Drake said that.

Cheers to the Brewers!

Mr. Walter

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Eric is a graying family man, math teacher at an IB public high school, and a member of a casual weekly EDH playgroup in Fresno, California. He enjoys interactive play and complex board states, and has only recently resolved to include win conditions in the decks he builds.